Thursday, March 23, 2017

DOC Sec. Wetzel: Mandatory minimums don't work

Pennsylvania Secretary of Correction John E. Wetzel and Director of Planning, Research & Statistics Dr. Brett Bucklin published the following commentary in the Harrisburg Patriot-News:

Most Pennsylvanians would agree that ensuring public
safety is what they want most from the criminal justice system.

When it comes to law and order we are all willing to
pay to be safe, and we recognize that decisions about public safety must never
be made based simply on balancing budgets.

At the same time, many Pennsylvanians are uninformed
about a current policy discussion underway in our criminal justice system,
which is mostly going unnoticed and hides under the false guise of improving
public safety.

The debate is over mandatory minimum
sentencing.

Several mandatory minimum sentencing laws were found
to be unconstitutional by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2015.

Legislation to reinstate these laws are right now
being considered by the General Assembly, which might be fine if there was any
evidence that mandatory minimum sentences enhanced public safety.

But the record is clear that they don't.

Statewide crime numbers are only available through
2015, but show that the violent crime rate in Pennsylvania remained the same in
2015, while both property and drug crime rates declined.

Local statistics from Philadelphia and Harrisburg
reveal that crime rates for major crime types dropped in these cities during
2016.

Crime in Pennsylvania is lower now than it was in
1970, before mandatory minimums existed.

If mandatory minimums are supposed to enhance public
safety, this is not reflected in Pennsylvania's crime rates, which have
continued to drop without them.

Mandatory minimum sentencing laws require courts to
treat all defendants the same, regardless of the facts of the case or the
person's circumstances.

This one-size-fits-all approach does not work when
it comes to healthcare or education policy, so why should we think it works in
criminal justice?

Some prosecutors argue that mandatory minimums are
needed because some judges are too lenient. The fact is that judicial
discretion is already structured in Pennsylvania under sentencing
guidelines.

Judges in Pennsylvania sentence within the
recommended guidelines 90 percent of the time, and the seven percent of cases
where judges depart below the guidelines is mostly due to a recommendation by
the prosecutor. Sentencing guidelines render mandatory minimum sentences
unnecessarily rigid.

There is no good evidence that mandatory minimums do
anything to make the public safer.

Judge David Ashworth once again ordered Samuel
Santiago to serve 20 to 40 years in state prison for the repeated rape and
sexual assault of a girl beginning when she was 4 and continuing for nine
years.

Take one purpose of sentencing, to deter future
criminal behavior. The science on deterrence is now clear that it is the
swiftness and certainty of punishment that deters, not the severity.

Mandatory minimums target the severity of punishment
by unnecessarily ratcheting up sentence lengths. For criminals who tend
to be impulsive, inconsistently delivered and arbitrarily long sentences do
nothing to deter future crime.

A study by the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing
found that the imposition of a mandatory minimum sentence was not a predictor
of criminal re-offending.

Estimates are that if Pennsylvania's Legislature
reinstates mandatory minimums it could cost taxpayers as much as $85.5 million
per year.

For all of these reasons, a bi-partisan consensus
has built around the country that mandatory minimums are ineffective and should
be scaled back or eliminated.

More than 30 states have now reconsidered mandatory
minimum sentencing laws. Conservative groups like Koch Industries, the
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and the Commonwealth Foundation
here in Pennsylvania, have all expressed opposition to mandatory
minimums.

Yet many in our Legislature are ignoring these
realities and moving forward to quietly reinstate mandatory minimums. This puts
Pennsylvania out of touch with the facts.

About Matt

An analysis of crime and punishment from the perspective of a former prosecutor and current criminal justice practitioner.
The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions or postions of any county, state or federal agency.